1. Statement of the Technical Field
The invention is directed to the field of memory devices in electronic systems, and more particularly, to non-volatile memory devices in electronic systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
The need to retain cost and performance competitiveness in the production of metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) devices, and particularly MOSFET-based memory devices, has driven the increase in device density in integrated circuits. As a result, new technologies are constantly needed to order to allow the feature size of these devices to be reduced and therefore allow the device density to be increased. This is generally referred to as device “scaling”. Unfortunately, as non-volatile MOSFET-based memory devices are scaled, such devices suffer from several problems. In particular, interactions between the channel and source/drains of these devices may degrade the ability of the gate of the same to control whether the device is on or off. This phenomenon is generally referred to as “short-channel effects”. Further, the reduction of design features makes it difficult for such memory device to meet data retention requirement, e.g., a ten year data retention requirement.
One proposed solution for addressing the above-mentioned issues with non-volatile MOSFET-based memory device is the use of FINFET structures. That is, rather that using the conventional horizontal arrangement for a channel in a non-volatile MOSFET-based memory device, the channel is instead formed by providing a vertical semiconductor or “fin”. As a result, the gate electrode effectively surrounds the channel and every region of the channel is influenced by the gate electrode. Therefore, because charge flow can be more effectively inhibited between a source and a drain when the transistor is turned off, it may be possible to reduce power consumption. Additionally, since a portion of the channel is vertically oriented, a FINFET non-volatile memory cell can be formed with a foot print of a smaller, horizontal device. However, the increased channel length provided by the vertical fin allows the reduced size FINFET memory cell to retain the data retention characteristics of larger devices.